


hook and eye

by thishazeleyeddemon



Series: hook and eye [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam Milligan is Not Forgotten, Adam Milligan is So Done, Adam is such a bitter bitch in this one, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bitterness, Break Up, Emotional Manipulation, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Gaslighting, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I REWROTE THIS SO MUCH I AM GOING TO BED, I just was like Adam can have a little Being Mean and Unreasonable. As a treat, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Men of Letters (Supernatural), Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Michael Steals From The Rich, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Self-Esteem Issues, THE PROMISED. HAPPY ENDING., Witch Adam Milligan, it's okay y'all they'll get through it, more tags for Part 2!!, of course you would, prays the rewriting paid off, would you all like to hear about Michael essentially getting his ex to get back together with him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishazeleyeddemon/pseuds/thishazeleyeddemon
Summary: you fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye- Margaret AtwoodMichael succumbed to his Father's manipulations. He never wanted to destroy the Earth, but it was so hard, so hard, to find the words to fight back against his father when he was all alone. He never wanted to do that. He never wanted to leave Adam.Adam doesn't know that.
Relationships: Michael/Adam Milligan
Series: hook and eye [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112354
Comments: 81
Kudos: 136





	1. renaissance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fxa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fxa/gifts).



> @ Fxa: thanks for helping me brainstorm. I know I already said that but still <333
> 
> EDIT: SOMEONE MADE A VIDEO FOR HOOK AND EYE??  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkBpjyTbnEU

He woke up alone, thank goodness. 

He didn't know what he would have done if he hadn't. What would he have done, those first few hours, if he'd had to plaster a smile on over his face, if he'd had to spin out a lie to soothe someone's worries - I mean, what would he have even said? What words were there to describe the freezing, visceral pain of it? As if the sun had gone dark in the sky, as if his heart had been replaced with a chunk of ice -

\- no. Better to not speak of it.

He didn't know how long he lay there, in the grass, before he was able to get to his feet. He couldn't breathe right - it was like rocks had been stacked on his chest, slowly pressing out all his air. He didn't know how long he was there, drowning in the aching absence.

Still, eventually, he got up. Wiping the tears off his face, he started for a road.

He had answers to find.

\----

If nothing else - if Michael had nothing else - at least the Empty wasn't cold.

The Cage had been freezing, the sort of freezing that spoke of never having known the touch of a sun. It had been its own kind of torture, the way the cold bore down on him like a physical thing; it was designed for Lucifer, of course, who was of cold and frost and the night between stars. It wasn't designed for Michael, who had never had cause to regret his fiery nature until he was behind those walls, in that endless, ice-water chill. 

If nothing else, the Empty wasn't cold. 

Sometimes, though, he wished for the cold still. It would be a wonderful distraction from the noise. 

Michael didn't blame the others. The Empty's will was like drowning. It overwhelmed, it encompassed, drowning whole valleys of the mind with its force. The effort it took to not sleep was far too much to waste on things like not screaming - he could barely even think.

When he could, he thought of Adam.

* * *

He had hoped - he didn't know what he had hoped. So much of his mind after Adam had been - taken was a confusion, a tangled mass of grief and madness like a twisting Labyrinth with himself at the center. He remembered what had happened in disconnected flashes - kneeling on the cold concrete reaching out with his power for Adam's soul like casting fishing line into the sea and finding nothing, the thud Lucifer's body made when it hit the ground, the cold whisper of his father's voice as he wove a web around Michael's thoughts, the painful, knife-bright light -

A labyrinth was a perfect metaphor, actually. That’s what it felt like, to think in that dark place sideways from reality; it felt running through endless twisting corridors after a ball of red thread, searching searching searching - _what could I have done? What went wrong? What happened?_

It would have been easier if the answer was nothing. Like a balm to an open wound. _It’s okay, it’s terrible but it’s not your fault, see? You didn’t really mean to, so doesn’t that mean it never happened? There was nothing you could have done. It’s not_ really _your fault._

He used to be better at lying to himself. _(Father will be back any day now. Raphael will come for me. What I do is right.)_ Now every word rang hollow. 

Because he didn’t have to listen, did he? He didn’t have to stand there like a broken puppet and listen to what his father said, the honeyed lies that filled his head. He didn’t have to listen. 

Maybe he still would have died. But then he could have died with honor, he thought deliriously, twisting and pushing against the Shadow’s will like fighting the thunderstorm. He could have died defending Adam’s world instead of helping to condemn it. He could have come up with something, maybe a way to pull apart Amara and Chuck or find another Leviathan blossom, and maybe he could have died but he would have helped, he could have made a choice. He had a _choice._

He understood why humans blamed everything on Lucifer. It was terrible to know you’d chosen wrong.

_“Is that really what you want to do? Spend the rest of existence pining over some long-lost human? Being all alone?”_

He was alone. Despite the despairing wails from all sides, the Shadow’s will like a hand on the back of his neck, he could sense no presence near him. It was like every other entity in here was a trillion miles away, Empty space yawning between them. He was alone, finally, truly alone now. For the first time in his existence he was without even his star, his warm laughing candle-eyed companion, who might even now be languishing wherever Chuck had sent him because Michael could have helped and he was _weak_ and he was a coward and he didn’t, he didn’t, because he chose not to.

He cried into the dark. No one heard.

\----

 _(”No, that’s not - you’re_ lying _-”_

_“Why would we lie - come on, now.”  
_

_“No, no - he wouldn’t, he said, he promised me -”  
_

“ _Is it really such a shock? Dude’s a douche, he would do anything to get what he wanted. He was probably just tryin’ to fill the time until Daddy came back.”_

_“Dean, take it down a notch - Adam? Hey Adam, come on, look at me -”)  
_

_\----_

“You’re _still_ awake?”

It took Michael several moments to raise his head, to piece together enough of his consciousness to understand. Something sighed, before there was a hard blow to his abdomen that made him shudder and gasp - but nonetheless brought him further out of the twisting, snarled vortex.

Adam’s face stared down at him - but it wasn’t Adam. Adam didn’t have eyes like that. They looked like Adam’s eyes, to be sure - but Adam _didn’t_ have eyes like that.

“You’re so stubborn,” the Not-Adam complained. It had Adam’s voice, technically - in the same way that Michael had Adam’s voice. It sounded nothing like him. “When are you going to go to sleep? I have too much to worry about to deal with you.”

Michael blinked, trying to focus. At least he knew who this was now. “I don’t plan to,” he croaked. “Shadow.”

The Shadow scowled, folding their arms. “Why not? You think you’re proving something, Archangel? You think anyone’s listening?”

“I have a name,” Michael pointed out. The omnipresent oppressive weight of the Shadow’s will had relaxed, possibly since the Shadow recognized that it would make it a little difficult to converse as it appeared to want to. He dragged himself up. The stuff that the Empty was made of had a hideous texture - like oil and clouds and water and nothing at all all at once.

“Well, Archangel?”

Michael blinked at them stupidly. He could hardly think. It was like he’d been torn apart and was hanging together by threads - oh wait, that was true. “I can’t forget,” he told them. “I can’t, I have to remember. I _promised.”_

 _“Really.”_ The Shadow raised an eyebrow. “You realize no one cares what you do?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Michael snapped, stung. _No one cares - no one’s paying attention -_ “I promised. It’s - it’s the least I can do for him.”

The Shadow tilted their head, fixing him with a cool stare. He shifted. There was something about their gaze that was peculiarly uncomfortable. “You think this has a point? That this makes amends, or something?”

Michael exhaled slowly. “No, but - I promised to not forget him. I can’t break that.”

“Why not? You did already.”

Michael nearly lunged for them. “I -” _did, didn’t I? I never meant to but I did. I listened to what he said and I told him that I would never forget him and as soon as he was gone, I forgot._ He blinked, feeling bleak. “I didn’t,” he tried, and knew it was weak. “I didn’t mean to.” 

“Did you not, or didn’t you mean to? Those are different excuses.” The Shadow smiled. It was a terrible expression indeed. “Whichever it is, does it matter now? He doesn’t know, after all.”

Michael froze. “What do you mean?” 

The Shadow’s smile widened. “Don’t you know? Didn’t you feel the change?”

“I was a little distracted with you trying to put me to sleep,” Michael said dazedly. Light was bubbling up in his chest, painful in intensity. _Can it be-_ “What are you going on about?”

The Shadow’s smile flickered, and Michael flinched back, a thought cast back to the times he’d stood in judgement above a human. He wondered if it was like this, kneeling on the cold ground, subject to this creature’s whims. 

“It was the Nephilim brat, the one that woke everyone up,” the Shadow sniffed. “His silly bomb turned him into a vacuum for power. He stole Chuck’s Light after your idiotic death, casting him down to live as a mortal for the rest of his days. He sits in Heaven now with Castiel, apparently - but before that, he brought everyone back.” The Shadow’s face barely changed at all as they spoke. “Your human - Adam - lives.”

_Adam lives, Adam lives, Adam lives, Adam, Adam, Adam -_

\- “How do you know this?” Michael croaked. His mind was afire. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, if I’m awake I can see the world, and if I sleep I dream of it,” the Shadow told him. “Your Adam is on Earth now.”

“He’s - is he okay?” Desperation, after so long of empty despair and the struggle to remain awake, was like a lightning bolt to the heart. He stumbled forward. “Please, you have to tell me, is he okay -”

“Shut up already,” the Shadow snapped, and for a moment he felt their will on him again. Like a vice, exactly like that, all force and mechanical pressure. “Stars, you’re all so loud.”

“But is he okay?” Michael swallowed, terrible visions dancing behind his eyes. 

The Shadow rolled their eyes. “I’m sure. Look, why don’t you sleep? It’s not like staying awake will change anything.” They tilted their head, their eyes boring into Michael. “I mean, you didn’t do anything, your whole, worthless life that wasn’t for Daddy dearest. You really think keeping one promise you’re already thought to have broken will change that?”

“What - what do you mean, “thought to have broken”?” Michael asked, a nameless dread welling up like pus in a wound.

The Shadow smiled. “Want to see?”

The world twisted, inside out like a Moebius strip. Michael barely had time to cry out before - he winced, covering his eyes. 

“Where are...” he tried. 

“The Men of Letters bunker, in Lebanon, Kansas,” came the Shadow’s voice. “Open your eyes and look, _Lord Viceroy.”_ Michael had never heard his title said with such gleeful malice before. Still, he obeyed, finding that he had adjusted to the sudden brightness compared to the lightless nothing of the Empty.

The bunker looked much as it had the few times Michael had been there - or he thought it did. He had no eyes for it, only for the slim figure reading at the table in the middle of the library. 

“Adam,” he breathed.

“This is the past,” the Shadow intercut. “This happened - oh, a few years ago on Earth, now. Keep that in mind, will you.” They did not sound like they spoke from concern - just the opposite, their voice dripping with petty spite. Michael barely heard them, staring enraptured at his - at his Adam.

He looked tired, Michael thought. The dark circles under his eyes had grown to deep smudges - when was the last time he slept? His cheekbones stood in prominent relief on his face, as if it had been a while since he’d eaten enough consistently. He’d found a different outfit too, finally - they’d been meaning to get more clothes, but after a millennia of wearing the same jacket others just sat wrong on their shoulders, so they’d put it off. He was wearing a red scarf and an old grey hoodie that seemed too big for him; he was thin as men went already, and the old grey cloth seemed to swallow him. His hair was messy, like he’d run his fingers through it, but at least it was shorter - he’d mentioned wanting another haircut, right before everything happened. There was a scar across his cheek that hadn’t been there before; Michael burned with fury to see it. What foolish creature had dared to touch Adam? 

But he was _here._ Michael pulled back his hand - he had reached for Adam without even thinking of it. He felt like he was being twisted in two, as the fervent, sun-bright elation that he was _okay_ warred with loneliness that had risen up around him like a tidal wave. It had almost been bearable, when he was simply dwelling in memory and sorrow and trying his hardest not to sleep. But standing in front of Adam, hearing the soft rustle of his fingertips against the paper as he turned a page of his book, seeing the golden shine of his hair, the way his chest gently rose and fell as he breathed, and not being able to touch him, to speak to him? That was a fresh pain. Like something inside him had been scraped raw.

“You look like you haven’t slept in weeks,” he said numbly. “And after all that complaining about not being able to sleep in the Cage too.”

Adam, of course, didn’t react. Some seam in Michael tore open wider. 

Whatever that book was, Adam was engrossed in it. Michael stepped forward to read over his shoulder. It seemed to be about herbs, of all things. Adam hadn’t not been interested in plants before - Adam was interested in _everything -_ but the sight of him reading some old herbalist’s tome was a little surprising, nonetheless. 

“Did you develop an interest in botany while I was gone, or something?” He craned his neck, trying to see better. “I was never the one in charge of plants. I was in charge of angels who were, but that’s not the same thing, unfortunately. I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell you too much about them. We could always learn together, of course.”

“He can’t hear you,” the Shadow said.

“Yes, I heard you the first time.” Michael didn’t bother to turn his head to look at them. It would mean less time he was looking at Adam. 

So enthralled by Adam was he that he entirely failed to hear the click of the Bunker’s door closing, or the thud of footsteps against the floor before they were almost upon them. He jumped, darting in front of Adam on instinct before he remembered this had already happened. Before he could recover his composure, the interloper rounded the corner and froze. 

Michael’s mood sunk instantly. “Oh, it’s _you.”_ he muttered.

Sam Winchester was unaware of this, of course. He had stopped short upon seeing Adam, his eyes wide and body tense. Michael saw the way he shifted his weight and snarled. “If you even think about hurting -”

“- Adam?” Sam’s voice was taut, like it had been that day all those - years? - ago, when this man had tried to excuse the fact that he’d _left_ Adam, that he’d forgotten him, that he’d said all those pretty lies about Adam staying with them -

- _Like you did?_

Michael drew back.

It was plain that Adam had heard Sam, but he didn’t react immediately. He breathed out a long, slow breath and closed his book, taking exaggerated care to not damage the spine or pages, before he slowly turned to face Sam. Despite himself, Michael smiled. He could recognize Adam’s spite when he saw it, rare though expressions of it were.

“Hello, Sam,” Adam said. Someone who didn’t know him would have said he sounded calm. Michael, who did, grinned wider. 

“Good luck,” he told Sam with satisfaction.

Sam swallowed, face full of uncertainty. “How did you get in here?” Michael wanted to tear his head from his shoulders.

“You truly know nothing of him if you think he’d attack you,” he told Sam, heedless of the fact Sam couldn’t hear him. “He doesn’t _attack_ people, even when it would be justified. He’s a better man than you or Dean will ever be.”

“There are Men of Letters all over the world, Sam,” Adam said coolly. “Turns out, they don’t care if you’re someone’s bastard.”

Sam flinched; Michael wanted to hug Adam. “Was it hard to find them?” he asked him. “I’m sure it didn’t give _you_ much trouble. You always were the clever one.” Pride billowed up inside of him. 

“ _You’re_ a Man of Letters now?” Michael hissed at Sam’s tone. Adam frowned, clearly hearing the same thing. 

“Not exactly,” Adam said, and then didn’t clarify. He simply continued staring at Sam, his gaze shadowed and blank. Sam shifted, overtly uncomfortable. 

“What are you doing in our bunker, anyway?” Sam said at last.

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not your bunker,” he pointed out. “Just because you and _Dean_ were the last ones, it doesn’t mean the bunker belongs to you. And anyway, you haven’t been here for seven months. I thought you’d abandoned this place.” Michael wasn’t sure if Sam could hear it, but he could tell Adam wished that had been the case.

“I - I moved -” Sam swallowed and kept going. “But what are you doing here?”

“Well,” Adam said carefully. “I needed somewhere to stay, didn’t I?”

Michael’s face fell. Before, they’d found a cabin, long abandoned in the woods. It was a safe place (especially since Michael warded it like it was Heaven itself), and they’d planned to fill it with all sorts of things that they collected on their travels. But it was also not in America, and through miles of dense woodland besides. Not only that, but he knew Adam’s house in Windom had long since been sold off, his bank accounts long frozen. 

“You didn’t have anything left,” he said softly. 

Sam had clearly come to the same realization. Guilt shone on his face as he said, “You’ve just been living here, then?” 

“For a while.” Adam didn’t clarify how long. 

“How - how long are you planning to stay?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Well, no, but...” Sam bit his lip. “There’s just a lot of dangerous things here. I don’t want you to get hurt -” 

Adam’s expression flickered before it was replaced once more by a cold, bland politeness. “Don’t worry about me.” He said it like a command, not like a reassurance. Michael frowned. Something was off about Adam’s voice. He wasn’t sure he could say what it was exactly, but something was wrong. It was him, but he didn’t _sound_ like that.

“What’s happened to you?” he murmured.

He didn’t mean to say it for the Shadow to respond to, but they did nonetheless: “Why, you did.”

Michael flinched. Something in him ripped open even more. “I didn’t mean for this,” he said softly. He sounded like he was begging. 

The Shadow’s voice was darkly satisfied. “And yet it came nonetheless.”

Sam looked frustrated. “Look, you can stay in the bunker if you want, but - I mean, are you sure you want to stay here? What are you even planning to do?”

Adam sighed, looking around at the library stacks. “Well, you know...being alone, I have a lot of time to read.”

A fresh wash of guilt flooded through Michael, but he didn’t have time to focus on it. Sam’s eyes went wide, and he stepped forward towards Adam, only stopping when Adam tensed. “Adam - you _can’t,”_ he said urgently.

Michael looked between them, brow furrowing. “What?” Behind him, the Shadow huffed softly, a low, amused sound.

Adam hadn’t quite lost his mask of politeness, but his spine was stiff and ramrod-straight. Michael didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered behind Sam, like he was calculating his chances of making it to the door before Sam could grab him. “I do know how to read, thanks.”

“No, that’s not -” Sam blinked before refocusing. “Listen,” he started. “I know you miss him.”

Michael froze.

For a moment, grief was written plain on Adam’s face. Then the chilly facade slammed back down, as icy and blank as ever. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Michael took a step back. That was - “What’s going on?” he said numbly.

“Just watch.” The Shadow’s voice was soft as poison.

“No? Adam, look, I know you had your - _agreement,_ ” Sam said, voice dripping skepticism, “But it’s too much of a risk to try and bring him back. You -”

“Don’t know what you’re _talking about,”_ Adam snapped, leaning forward. His mask had cracked and the expression that replaced it made Michael ache - a deep pain was written clearly on his face, grief and fury mixed with his mouth pulled back in a snarl and his eyes suddenly bright and shiny. “You clearly don’t know me _at all.”  
_

_“_ What do you mean?”

“Adam,” Michael whispered.

“I mean,” Adam started, “That if you think I’m going to waste my _time_ trying to do a favor for someone who never cared about me, you don’t know _anything_ about me at all.” He pulled his lips back, exposing his teeth. It was not a smile. “I’m not _Michael.”_

Michael’s vision went white. 

“No no no, that’s not - _Adam_ -”

The Shadow snapped their fingers, and the scene dissolved around them, returning them to the darkness of the Empty and taking the sight of Adam away from him. Michael reached for him blindly, his head full of ringing static. At some point he had fallen to his knees, but he couldn’t bring himself to move, only able to stare ahead of himself at the place where Adam had been sitting, his ears buzzing with the way Adam had said his name. 

_“I’m not_ Michael _.”_

Adam had never said his name like that. Not even way back at the start, when every meeting they had was tinged with bitterness and derision on both sides, had Adam said his name like that.

“Why?” His own voice seemed to come from far away. “Why...”

“Is it really so surprising?” The Shadow’s voice had not a trace of sympathy.

It wasn’t surprising, Michael realized. He knew how Adam felt about John Winchester, knew how he felt about his brothers, the way he’d held his head high and refused to factor them into what he did once they were free in the slightest. Adam was too proud by half to go chasing after someone he thought had abandoned him, abandoned him just like everyone else, when he’d _promised -_

Michael heard someone sob, and it took him a moment to realize it was him. He clapped his hand over his mouth and continued to stare at where Adam had disappear as the weight of his failure crashed down on his head like a tsunami. He’d had a choice. He’d had a _choice_ to not listen, he’d had a choice, and maybe if he’d made it he wouldn’t have had to hear Adam say his name like it cut his mouth, _there was a choice -_

“Of course, it didn’t help how the Winchesters put it,” the Shadow added as though commenting on the weather. “After all, they never saw you change, did they? They didn’t have any reason to think that you really did care about him, and I expect _poor_ Adam’s so used to being abandoned already he didn’t see any reason to think about what they said. If he’d had another perspective...”

Would he have forgiven Michael? Michael couldn’t say. After all, the whole reason he’d met Adam in the first place was because Adam had been willing to give up his life, his freedom, his very body for the world he lived in. To disregard everything Adam had said, to give up his life and the freedom Adam had shown him and aid to destroy the world just because he was _told to_ \- 

“Too late now, I suppose,” the Shadow commented idly. “After all, who’s left to tell him otherwise? He doesn’t have anyone to tell him that you _did_ care.” 

It was like the Shadow’s voice came from miles away.

“So really,” they continued, “What’s the point in continuing to fight me? As far as Adam’s concerned, you forgot him years ago. You don’t really think that thinking about him now is going to save anything, do you? It was already too late when you gave Chuck that information. Just stop fighting, give in to me, and -”

“No,” Michael whispered.

The Shadow paused. “What?”

Michael turned to face them. “I have to go back,” he told them. “Please, let me go back.”

The Shadow folded their arms. “And why would I do that, Lord Viceroy?” Their voice dripped with disdain. Michael ignored it.

It had been a long time since he had felt anything but empty sorrow. But now, with the memory of tears in Adam’s eyes fresh in his head, he just _couldn’t_. It was one thing to take his punishment when he was the only one to suffer for it. But to lay still and sleep while Adam thought he had meant _nothing_ to him? It would be the culmination of his failures. It could not be born. “I can’t leave him like that.”

“The time for that conclusion was about four years ago,” the Shadow said flatly. 

“ _Please_ -” Michael forced himself back under control. “Look, you said you don’t want me here awake, and you let Castiel out before,” he argued, even as the words four years made his spirit sink low. That shouldn’t be any time at all, but for mortals that could be forever.

“And look where that got me,” the Shadow hissed. “Endless trouble, just for fulfilling my duty!” 

“If you let me out, I promise I won’t cause you anymore trouble.” 

“Like you promised Adam? What’s your word worth, Viceroy Michael?”

“I -” Michael flinched, biting his lip. 

“I didn’t mean to,” he said again. “I never wanted to break it.”

“Are you a child? You did it regardless!” 

Michael took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. There was no air here, and he didn't need to breathe, but the gesture - one he picked up from Adam, of course - was still, somehow, soothing. If he wanted to return to Adam (and he did, the reawakened longing like a physical weight), he needed to _think_ , not rage and beg like _~~what he was~~_ a choiceless slave. 

“I know,” he told them. “But I owe him. I have to make it right. Please, send me back.”

“And you think _you_ are what he needs, do you?” There was something about the Shadow’s voice that stole the thought from his mind. “What’s to stop you from messing it up again? What will you do if he doesn’t welcome you? Come back to me?”

Michael faltered. If Adam didn’t welcome him...what was there for him, on the right side of the sun? No one mourned him (he remembered tears in Adam’s eyes and revised that: no one wanted to mourn him). Did he even deserve to walk there again, when he had been okay with (or at least, thought he had to) helping to destroy it? What was there for him?

_“If you wanted, I could send you to Heaven if we get out.”_

_“And why would I do that?”  
_

_“I...I just don’t understand why you want to go back to Earth so much. No, stop looking at me like that - what is there for you? Your old life will be gone. You could rest in Heaven and be at peace. So why do you want to live again so badly? What do you have left?”_

_“I thought we were trying to be polite, now?”  
_

_“Please?”  
_

_“Oh, wonderful effort. I...I guess I don’t have much left. You’re right.”  
_

_“Then why?”  
_

_“...Well, there’s still me.”  
_

Michael blinked, and knew at once what his choice was.

“You may as well put me back,” he told the Shadow. “If you want any peace again, you’ll send me back right now.”

The Shadow scoffed. “Let me guess - you’re going to try and do what Castiel did, and annoy me into letting you out?” 

He hadn’t actually known that that was what Castiel had done, but that was useful information. “I’m not going to _try_ ,” he told them, raising his head defiantly.

_“And what are you going to do? Hide away and try to cling to your fading sanity?”_

_“Oh, I’m not going to_ try _, Archangel. I can last as long as I need.”  
_

He swallowed down the rush of sorrow and continued staring at the Shadow.

The Shadow’s gaze was unsettling, even for him. Even though their voice could emote, their eyes never did, as blank and empty as their home. It made him want to shudder.

“No,” they said finally. “I’m tired of dealing with all of you and your stupid plans. Rage and scream all you want, archangel, you’re reaping the grain you sowed.”

Before Michael could say, do anything, they vanished. A moment later, the force of their will crashed back down on his head, pinning him like a butterfly to cardboard as a wave of exhaustion swept through his being, a wordless command to _SLEEP_.

But Adam needed him. Adam, sun-touched Adam, who had taught him to have his own will in the first place, thought that his words - the only true care Michael had ever experienced - had meant nothing. He thought that all those words, the years they’d spent telling each other stories, had meant nothing. He thought that _he_ had meant nothing. This could not be born.

Michael strained against the Shadow’s bonds. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t fight them. He had no power here, not here as a subject of their domain. 

“ _Come on, archangel, what else can I do? I’m trapped here forever, why not sing and pass the time? What else is there to do?”_

Michael took another breath he didn’t need. _How’s this for guiding me?_ he thought. He hadn’t sang in a very, very long time; once Chuck had left, there had seemed to be very little time for things like singing in Heaven. He’d felt bad about it before, but in this case he imagined it would probably help. 

It was for Adam. That made it worth it. And in truth it felt good to have something to fight for. He knew _why_ he had that character trait, that it had never been meant to serve his own purposes, but, well.

No one was watching him, now. No one cared. No one was listening. And yet - he was still here. He was powerless and forsaken and alone, but there was still him. There was still him, and he was still here.

He opened his mouth, and started to sing.

\----

He had no idea how long it took; it could have been eons.

It was good that he’d had Adam to teach him some songs; even though most of the ones he’d sung in the Cage were half-remembered conglomerates of melodies he’d heard on Earth, they’d spent a lot of their brief months of freedom listening to music. Earth music was so unlike Heaven music; nearly two thousand years ago he would have dismissed it as plain, disorganized and unlovely. Listening to it with his own ears, however (or technically Adam’s, but you know), he found it to have a kind of compelling force. Nothing magical, at least not usually; in truth he didn’t know quite how to describe it. It all said something, was the thing. Angelic music was just beautiful, but human music, even human music without lyrics, all seemed to be about something or other. So many of them, he supposed with that many they would have to come up with many different ways to cover everything that needed to be said.

He went through all of the songs he could remember that Adam had liked _(I remember, I remember, I remember -)._ When he’d exhausted those, he sang them again twice over; partially to annoy the Shadow but also partially because they filled his mind with images of Adam singing, face unscarred and eyes bright with joy, not sorrow. He had said he was no master singer, but whenever he had Michael had found himself unable to look away. The songs were a knife to the core of him, juxtaposed as they were with the memory of tears shining in Adam’s eyes and his voice snarling low and bitter, but it was worth it. Adam was always worth it. 

When he finally tired of singing those, he switched to songs he remembered from his youth. There were few that weren’t hymns to Chuck, but there were some - mainly war songs, or at least those were the ones he knew best. He sang them as loud as he could, hoping the Shadow could hear that he was still awake and meaning to remain that way. There was no sign if they did or not; the pressure was uniform as always.

He ran out of those and did switch to the hymns; for one of the first times in his existence he tried to make something new, and change the words to suit his new knowledge. He was certain his efforts were terrible, but it was sort of cathartic, he supposed, to scream such things as loud as he could. It was the sort of thing that would have made Adam laugh, and suggest new words to go along with it. He had quite the imagination for that sort of thing, though he rarely cared to use it.

On occasion, his frustrations and sorrow did well up and steal the songs from his throat. On times like that he simply let himself scream and cry; howling into the dark and wishing for it to cry back. He was sure he was making quite a spectacle of himself, but he couldn’t quite find it in himself to care, especially when the only one to hear was the Shadow.

He didn’t think he’d ever been so loud. He wasn’t inclined to it, by nature (and this was his, not a part of his position - the Viceroy had to be much louder and more imposing than Michael cared to be). If he let himself just be loud and not think about it, it was sort of fun; he understood Gabriel a little more now, he thought. 

It was an unknowable length of time later, in this timeless place without sun. He had just finished a song about the whole being dead thing that Adam had found _very_ funny and was going to start massacring another hymn when -

“- Will you _shut up already?!”_

Michael closed his mouth and laid his head against the horrible ink-like nothing the Empty was made of, grinning deliriously. “Hello, Shadow.”

The pressure decreased again abruptly, letting him sit up. He pulled himself up to face the Shadow.

They were still copying Adam’s face - copying being the important word. The effect in their anger was like a Halloween mask; nothing like Adam at all. Their arms were folded over their chest and they were glaring at him like they wanted to rip out his voice themself.

Which was probably true.

“How long was that?” he asked before they could speak.

Michael had never understood the English idiom glaring daggers until this point. If they could will him dead with their gaze alone, they would. “What would you do if I told you it had been a thousand years, and Adam was long dead at this point?”

He flinched, but the answer came easily. “I’m an _archangel_ ,” he said. “I can still find him if he’s dead.”

They continued to glare, but it looked as if their heart wasn’t quite in it. They seemed...

...they seemed _tired_ , Michael realized. 

“What was said of your stubbornness is true,” they muttered. “It’s been a year and a day.”

Michael relaxed, tension bleeding out of him. Five years. That wasn’t too long. It had taken Adam and him three hundred years to speak, before; five years was _nothing,_ he thought, and carefully ignored the part of him that spoke of how much the mortal world could change in so short a time. It was not too late. It couldn’t be.

“Why are you here, Shadow?” he asked.

They looked like they were about to say something nasty, when all of a sudden their shoulders slumped like a cut puppet. “Oh, to Hell with this,” they sighed. “If I send you back, do you promise not to come back for a long time?”

Michael straightened, sudden hope striking him like lightning. “That’s the plan. Shadow -”

The look in their eye froze the words in his mouth. “Save it. I mean it, archangel. If I see you again, you’re not getting a second chance. I’ll throw you in the deepest part of the Empty I can find, and leave you there till the last star in the sky burns out.”

Michael bit his lip, but even that proclamation wasn’t quite enough to kill his elation. “These terms are acceptable,” he managed.

“Seeing as you won’t get others, they’d better be.” The Shadow sighed again. “Nothing can come for free, but still - with you gone, I might get some actual sleep. ”

Michael had no other warning. He wanted to ask what they meant, that nothing could come for free, but as soon as the Shadow finished speaking, the ground fell away under Michael’s feet. He cried out as he tumbled down, down into the deep, blooming black. 

He fell for a long time.

He fell for a long time, but eventually the world around him grew light again. The darkness around him grew grey, then white, and then -

\- he woke up.

\----

Of course, the Shadow wouldn't put him by Adam’s location. That was too easy. Still, waking up in a drugstore parking lot in the middle of the night wasn’t quite how he would have imagined it.

There was no one around that moment, thank goodness. It gave him time to stagger to his feet and stumble away into a nearby copse, hiding in the trees away from the sight of the road. It was good to have a place to hide; it gave him time to see what it was that was so terribly wrong.

It was something in his Grace, he realized immediately. Had the Shadow done something? Was this his payment for his resurrection?

The transition from the nothing of the Empty to the press and rush of Earth was overwhelming. He used his Grace, strange as it was, to cloak his senses from Earth while he took stock of himself.

This was a vessel...of sorts. It was closer to the apparition he’d used to speak to Adam when he was possessing him, the image of a human man with nothing beneath, a doll to manipulate. He doubted it would last him forever, but it should last long enough for him to go back to Adam. 

Of his Grace, he wasn’t sure he knew enough to speak on the problem - this was new, and he was no medic - but if he had to hazard a guess, he would say that there was...less of it. Not enough to make him human, but perhaps enough to make him no longer an archangel. And despite it all, he had none of the aching hollowness that he’d heard those who had lost their Grace before speak of. It was as if he’d been adjusted, remade, instead of simply hollowed out.

That the Shadow could do such a thing was troubling indeed. So little was known of their capabilities. He’d only met them once before all of this, long ago at the very start, before they’d retreated into the Empty and locked the door behind them. He knew little of them, or how far their reach was.

On the off-chance they could hear him, he called out, “It’s still worth it, you know. I don't need all my Grace - I’m _retired_.”

The only answer was the rush of wind rustling the branches of the trees.

He shuddered. He really didn’t need it all - had, in fact, daydreamed occasionally about being less powerful, about being more of the world than an outside observer like he was designed to be - but the Shadow hadn’t even told him what they were going to do until they did it. They hadn’t even bothered to give him a choice. It was funny how wrong that sat with him now, when before he would - he still would have minded, but he would have just taken it, called it a fair price and ignored his own feelings on the matter.

And it was fair. But it would have been nice to be consulted.

Ignoring the phantom sensation of a foreign touch inside of him, he took a deep breath - relishing in the feel of real air, even if he didn’t need it to live - and slowly peeled the layers of Grace back from his perception. Slow, slow. He didn't have time to adjust slowly. He didn’t have a choice. Adam, Adam, he had to go to Adam -

\- he took a deep breath again and _focused_. Wasting power on cloaking himself from sensory overload wasn’t something he could afford, with his abilities so reduced. He had to adjust.

He was in that copse for the better part of a day, sitting against a tree and letting his senses reacclimatize. Sensory overload was easier for a human than an angel - a fact that would have made him scoff before he had been made aware of the sheer, blinding intensity of human senses in comparison - but anyone could be overwhelmed. There was so much here, compared to the sterile beauty of Heaven or the vast nothing of the Empty. There was just so _much_.

And he had the time now to see it all. He pressed his palms down over his eyes, the sheer scope of his new life suddenly made clear to him. No more would he have to concern himself with Heaven, or with his Father’s will. He could go wherever he wanted, do whatever he wanted. He was _free_. _He was free._

If any humans had entered the copse, they would have seen a man leaning against a tree, grinning to himself like a lunatic. Perhaps it was fortunate no one did.

When he finally mastered himself enough to stagger out of the trees, it was late afternoon the next day. People passed by, talking to each other or listening to music. Cars whizzed by on the road, carrying their occupants to who-knows-where. 

He was back. He was really back.

Time to find Adam.


	2. binary star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common barycenter. Systems of two or more stars are called multiple star systems. These systems, especially when more distant, often appear to the unaided eye as a single point of light, and are then revealed as multiple by other means..." - Wikipedia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah, Bitchin' Yule, Merry Other Winter Holiday unmentioned!!
> 
> Thank you to Fxa for help plotting/encouragement <333 couldn't have done it without you

He paused, before casting his senses out for him, suddenly sure that when he did he’d find nothing just as he had five years ago after he’d watched his Adam disappear like a dream forgotten in the morning. It was a startling certainty, and it froze him where he stood. Go - stars, what if the Shadow had been lying? Or what if something had happened to Adam in the year he’d been trying to annoy the Shadow into freeing him? What if he was hurt or lost or trapped somewhere or hidden from angelic eyes and Michael wouldn’t be able to _find_ him because he wasn’t an archangel anymore and he wouldn’t be able to do _anything_ because he was a _useless weak_ -

\- _okay, stop._ Michael forced himself to take a breath, then another. It was remarkable how grounding the feeling was. It was stronger for humans, he knew, but there was something about the slow, rhythmic movement, the rush of air inside and out, that soothed. Those were idle thoughts and foolish ones; nothing would be solved by _panicking_ like a fledgeling about to take their first flight. 

He breathed out again, and searched.

For one horrible moment it seemed as if there would be nothing, but then he felt him - far off like a candle burning in a thunderstorm, beautiful and bright-burning and there, there and _real_ and _alive_ , he was alive, alive alive Adam was _alive_ -

His emotions had never been so intense before Adam. The relief, the way the tension drained out of his Grace like a dam had been opened was like a physical force. He was there, and he was real, and he was alive. He fiercely tamped down on the instinct to pray in thanks; now was not the time to announce his presence, but if he hadn’t been so sure his nephew would not be pleased to see him alive again and also if his nephew wasn’t actually God now he would have gotten him something.

But Adam was alive. He was alive and free and from what Michael could feel he was still in the bunker in Lebanon, the safest place possible for him besides with Michael. He was _alive_.

Every mile between them suddenly seemed as far apart as the distance between galaxies. Unseen by all passerby, with no sign of his presence that a mortal could detect, Michael vanished.

He’d been to Lebanon before, technically, but he’d never had cause to see the actual town before. It was small, was his first thought. Small buildings made of brick, made even smaller by how big the sky was in Kansas. It was monstrously huge here, uncaged in by mountains and trees. Michael couldn’t help but stare up for a moment at the vastness of it. He’d never thought so much of it before but there, on the Lebanon road, he was oddly struck by it. He felt _small_. Just one part of a vast, intricate whole.

It was a nice feeling, he decided. Better that than a cold, unfeeling observer.

He could tell Adam that. He could tell Adam things again, because Adam was alive and real and free, and he would have given up all of his Grace for that. Although it was good that he hadn’t. He was glad to not have to try and navigate public transportation right after being brought back to life. It seemed like the kind of thing that would make his heads ache.

Stars, Adam was so _close_ here. The firework flare of his presence was warming his hands near a campfire. He was _so close_ here and so bright and so warm, brighter than everyone else, the same warmth and light that Michael had felt at his side every day for fifteen hundred and twenty-four years. It was like watching the first star shine again. It was suddenly unbearable to stand on this street, away from Adam, for another second.

The nondescript entrance to the Men of Letters bunker looked much the same as it had before. It looked like any old rundown power plant, but he could feel Adam underneath him. 

He stepped forward to the entrance, and stopped.

He didn’t have any plan.

He didn’t have any plan for what he was going to say or do or _anything_. He swallowed, suddenly unable to move as the Shadow’s words echoed in his head. What if he made a mess of things again? What was he going to do? What could he say?

There were so many things he wanted to say to Adam.

_I miss you._

_I never wanted to leave you._

_Being without you is like being in the Cage all by myself. It’s that same, crushing cold -_

_I’m sorry._

_I will love you unending and never care for another._

That was what he wanted to say. He wanted to fall to his knees before Adam and say all of them, hold his hand and beg for his forgiveness, for his understanding. He wanted that so much he trembled at the thought. 

But was that what Adam needed?  
  
What right did he have to ask for forgiveness from Adam after everything he’d done? What right did he have to ask for anything from Adam? 

Five years wasn’t anything to an immortal, but to a human that could be a long, long time indeed. Adam had somehow rebuilt a life all on his own from nothing at all, had survived, had - met more Men of Letters, somehow? What had happened there? - had lived, on his own. Michael had destroyed his life, stolen his body, dragged him down to Hell for over a thousand years and then when Adam had forgiven him somehow and _somehow, somehow_ learned to care for him despite everything Michael had went and forgotten everything that Adam had told him as soon as he was gone. He couldn’t ask for his forgiveness, he realized. He couldn’t ask for anything.

He had to be careful, to not hurt Adam more, and that meant if Adam wanted him to, if Adam asked him to…he would go. He would go and he would live alone and he would, no matter how much he wanted Adam’s warmth he would go and leave him be because it was Adam, the only person who’d ever cared for Michael outside of his role, the only person who’d ever cared for him at all.

If Adam didn’t want him, that was fine. He wouldn’t ask. He would let it be totally Adam’s decision, he wouldn’t - _couldn’t_ dishonor Adam and himself by begging for something that wasn’t his to ask for.

He would be fine, eventually. Adam mattered more.

He took a deep breath. It was for Adam. It was all for Adam.

The entrance to the bunker loomed in front of him like the mouth of a tomb. He swallowed. Now or never. Now or never, before Adam found him out here like some sort of spy. Now or never.

He didn’t move.

Oh, _stars._

 _For all your many faults, you aren’t a coward,_ he thought with frustration. _You’ve never avoided a challenge, even when you really should have. You owe him your courage. You owe him your ability to face your mistakes._

He still didn’t move.

_“Look, Adam,”_ said a woman’s voice from a memory that wasn’t his, sweet and melodious with a thick Minnesota accent. _“You don’t pull a bandage off slowly, sweetie, you do it all at once. Hurts less that way.”_

Michael bit his lip. 

_Thank you for your wisdom, Kate Milligan,_ he thought faintly. _Although I’m fairly certain if we met you would stab me, and rightfully so._

They should have met, but Adam had been putting off reuniting with his mother. He had been scared, Michael thought, scared of what she would think of the changes in her son, no matter how much Michael told him he was fine as he was and any changes were just a mark of his resilience, his courage and will. He’d been scared, and still recovering, and they’d meant to see her but they never had, they were supposed to have had _time_ -

If Adam wanted to see her again now, Michael would take him. It was all for Adam.

Michael took another breath, and just like ripping off a bandage, flew himself inside.

He had been expecting the inside of the bunker to look just the same. The Winchesters had never bothered to change it, after all. But it wasn’t a Winchester who’d been living in there for the past few years, it was the same man who’d occupied himself in the Cage by trying to dream of places he wanted to visit instead of doing what Michael had been doing at the time (read: wallowing in self-pity and despair). Adam wasn’t really one to leave things as is.

The first thing that struck Michael was the sunlight. Outside had been a clear day but late in the afternoon. But the bunker - which was underground - was filled with a bright warm light like it was high noon. He looked around for the source. As he did, he saw other changes. The library seemed to have increased in size, bookcases spilling out into the the balcony room. Some of the walls had been painted different colors, mostly lots of green and blue. 

Most incredible of all were the flowers and vines. They curled around the bookshelves and across the walls, like the bunker had been invaded by a jungle. They filled the air with a hot, green kind of smell, the smell of life and growing. None of them seemed to grow from anywhere specific, but all were very clearly vibrant and alive. They were so colorful - they didn’t look like plants from Kansas, perhaps not even ones from Earth.

Michael took a step forward to look at them closer, which was how he set off the intruder alert system.

The first clue he had was a flash of purple light, almost too bright for even him to see through. He cried out and took a step back but it was too late; before he could flee to safety a sigil flared to life under his feet, and the sense he had of the sprawling pathways through the world, the ways an angel could fly that nothing else could find suddenly snapped off, just like it had _when he was in the holy fire circle_ -

He didn’t have long to dwell on that old memory. Just as he was staring at the sigil glowing with purple fire, he heard a door slam somewhere in the recesses of the bunker and footsteps running in his direction. He froze, his thoughts stuttering and stalling like a broken computer. Oh stars he was there, he was right here, what was Michael going to do -

He turned, just as the footsteps got louder and louder and Adam rounded the corner. All thought fled Michael’s mind.

He’d been expecting him to look the same, he realized distantly. All his thoughts seemed to be coming from very far away.

He’d been expecting him to look like he remembered or like he had in the Shadow’s vision, and he hadn’t - seeing him in a vision had _nothing_ on seeing him in front of him, real and breathing and okay and _alive alive alive_. He’d never felt the swiftness of time in the mortal world quite so strongly, seeing the changes on his Adam’s face in only five years. 

Adam was taller now, just to start with. He’d told Michael he’d thought he was done with growing but clearly that hadn’t been true; he was a couple of inches taller than Michael now. He was wearing a thick coat and a scarf and his hands were covered with thick, black gloves. His shoulders were broader, his face not smooth but covered with a decent scruff, his hair darker and cut shorter to his head, as if the idea was to be able to not have to mess with it; Michael wondered if it would feel differently under his fingers. Strangest, though, and the clearest sign that things had changed was the purple light in his eyes, same as the sigil on the floor.

At least he knew who’d caught him, Michael thought dizzily. That was fine. He didn’t mind being caught by Adam.

Adam took a step back. For a moment when he’d ran in and seen Michael, an expression of total joy - as to happiness like the sea is to a puddle - had crossed his face for a moment, but it had vanished as swift as it had come. His shoulders had started to shake as he looked at Michael then back up at the door on the balcony then back down to Michael. His eyes were very, very wide, his pupils like tiny dots in a purple sea.

“You - you can’t -“ he started. 

The sound of his voice was different too, Michael realized dimly. It had deepened somewhat in the years they’d been separate. If Michael could, he would have focused on that, how one person could contain such enthralling variety. How could one person be so beautiful, so special? He wanted to hold Adam and feel the differences in him for himself, he wanted to hear how Adam had learned to do magic like this, he wanted to stroke Adam’s hair, he wanted to -

\- _to stop acting like a lovesick fool and say something!,_ screamed the last rational part of his mind.

He swallowed. His tongue didn’t seem to be working in his mouth. “Hi,” he said breathlessly, and then nearly kicked himself. _Hi? Five years and both of your deaths and you say hi?!_

Adam was still shaking, and it was dawning on Michael that something was terribly wrong. He’d been expecting to be yelled at, sworn at, have things thrown at him even maybe. The expression on Adam’s face was making his Grace twist and curl and go cold with discomfort and fear. 

If Michael didn’t know any better, he would say Adam was afraid.

Then all of a sudden, the fear and fury and who knows what else on Adam’s face vanished. It was replaced by a cold, blank expression, like a man carved out of ice. Adam raised his chin and smiled at him, a little, polite half-smile, like the face of a doll.

_Laughter, in the warm sunlight, a smile big and broad and full of life and hope, as its owner said, “It’s not like I can go back to college, not with an archangel -“_

Michael flinched, guilt suddenly clamping irons around his neck. “Hi,” he said again.

There was only the briefest flicker on Adam’s face before the plastic mask was back. Something about the look on his face as he opened his mouth to speak made Michael’s guilt seize his tongue and dread rise up like a choking wave -

“Hello, Viceroy Michael,” Adam said, with a voice as stilted and bland and empty as the one he’d used on the _Winchesters_. “What did your father send you here for?”

For one moment Michael really thought he’d been stabbed.

It was exactly like that, that punched-out feeling like someone had slipped a knife into his chest and now he couldn’t _breathe_. His hearing was suddenly filled with a buzzing, distant static. _No, no he can’t -_ “Adam -“

“What?” Adam tilted his head - a mannerism he’d picked up from Michael. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, his face as blank as if he was commenting on the weather, “I can’t imagine what other reason the Viceroy of Heaven would have for coming to see a lowly human like _me_.” 

“ _Adam_ ,” Michael whispered, as his Grace tried to twist itself in two. All his plans for what to say, how to act, seemed distant as if he was hearing them through a layer of cotton. All he could do was stare.

Adam drew back. For a moment the mask cracked, and Michael saw a flash of pain and confusion and sorrow before it disappeared again, like being covered with a blanket of snow. “Well? What is it? Oh, sorry - forgot his royal highness doesn’t like _questions_.” 

“You can ask me whatever you want,” Michael said desperately. “You’re not _lowly_ , I’m -“

Adam flinched, like he was struck. “What are you talking about?” His voice was still furious, but his eyes were very wide. “I’m just a human, and you’re the _Viceroy_. Why would you ever listen to _me_ when you could listen to your father?”

“Because you were _right_!” 

Adam took a step back and Michael immediately lowered his tone. “You were right,” he said again. “You were right, you were always right.”

“Me?” Adam was shaking. The purple light of the spell holding Michael flared. “What kind of trick is this? Why are you even here?” 

Michael swallowed, and told the truth. “I came for you,” he told him. “I don’t want anything in the bunker - I just came here for you.” It was true, and Michael’s voice shook as he said it. It was hard to shape his mouth around the words, and he didn’t realize until he had said them and Adam’s face changed the mistake he had made.

“You want to possess me again?” Adam backed up. His voice was steady but his hands were shaking, the whites of his eyes showing starkly around his irises. “Sorry, but I don’t have anything for you to hold above my head anymore.”

“No, Adam, I wouldn’t -“ _But you already did._

_“You think you’re what Adam needs?”_

“And I mean, didn’t I already give you enough?” He looked like he was trying so, so hard to not seem scared. Michael flashed back abruptly to the early years of the Cage, when they’d been starting to feel their way towards a positive relationship but weren’t anything like friends yet. He’d looked like this then too, and Michael hadn’t understood. Why did he never understand anything important before it was too late? 

“I already gave you my body, my future, a thousand years of my life, my -“ Adam cut himself off. “Isn’t that enough, Viceroy? Can’t you make whatever plans you’re making now without me? Can’t you just -“ His voice cracked; he ducked his head and took a deep, shuddering gasp before looking back up at Michael. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I…” Michael had to look down and away to master himself. His whole body was shaking, the inside of his head a mad scream of guilt - _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry -_

“I’m sorry,” he said again. This was a mistake, he shouldn’t have bothered him. This wasn’t going to accomplish anything but upsetting Adam, he shouldn’t have come, the only good thing in his life and he’d ruined it because he couldn’t keep himself from listening to someone who he _knew_ had lied to him, had never cared about him. “I’m sorry. If you - I’ll go.” He didn’t want to, he wanted to go about as much as he wanted to pull out all his feathers, but he couldn’t stay here and take more of Adam’s time. “I’ll leave you alone,” he said, and lowered his head, the weight of his failure around his neck like an iron chain. “I’m so sorry.”

When he looked up, Adam was staring at him. 

“I didn’t think…I thought you would insist more,” he said. His voice was oddly faint.

“You want me to go, so I will,” Michael said quietly. “I don’t…I don’t want to do anything you don’t want me to.”

Adam trembled. “I don’t…why did you come in the first place then?” He took a step back. “What do you _want_ from me?”

“I just…I just wanted to apologize. And explain, if that’s alright. But if you don’t want me to that’s alright,” he added hastily. “I don’t…” He swallowed. “It’s enough to see you again. Do you want me to go? I’ll go.” He would miss him, he would mourn what he lost, but Adam would be okay. It would all be fine if Adam was okay.

“I wouldn’t dream of ordering the Prince of Heaven,” Adam’s eyes were still very wide. He sounded angry, and afraid, and thoroughly overwhelmed all at once. 

“I’m not -“

Michael stopped himself. He had to be calm. He couldn’t frighten him, he’d already done enough to him. But what could he do to convince Adam he didn’t want to hurt him? What did he have to do?

On a half-formed whim, he knelt down. Adam’s eyes went even wider as he did, and he took a step back, as if he was thinking of running. Michael raised his hands by his head, in that human gesture of peace and friendliness.   
  
“Please,” he said, as softly as he could. “If you want me to leave, that’s fine, or if you want to hear what I was going to say, that’s fine too. But I promise, the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you.”

“I can’t imagine what you would want to say to me,” Adam said. His trembles were increasing, shaking his entire thin frame. 

“Then - please, let me talk, if you want?” Michael swallowed, took a deep breath. “I won’t - if you don’t want me to, then just say the word. But please - you have my word I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Like I had your _word_ you’d _stay_?” As soon as Adam said that he clapped his hands over his mouth. He shrank back, like he was bracing himself.

Michael stared, blinking. 

He’d been expecting a lot of reactions. Anger, sorrow, betrayal. But that sounded…that sounded like Adam was…

“I never wanted to leave,” he said quietly, and felt the aching uselessness of it. “I’m sorry.”

Adam made a strange, soft cry, muffled by his hands on his mouth. He looked away, focusing his gaze on the stone floor instead of Michael’s face. “Just get it over with already,” he snapped, and if Michael hadn’t known him so well, it would have been convincing as only anger and distaste.

Michael swallowed, all his planned explanations suddenly seeming woefully inadequate. What could he even say? Was there even anything at all that he could say that would soothe Adam’s feelings? _What makes you think Adam needs you?_

“I’m…after you were…” he faltered, memories of kneeling on cold concrete and searching for a light that wasn’t there welling up again like bile. “After, I was…” Why couldn’t he speak! What was wrong with him? 

“I went to a church,” he said eventually. “To hide. One named after me.”

“You were hiding from God,” Adam said, voice dripping disbelief. “In a church.”

Michael winced. “Well, I was…” _Torn apart, like someone had ripped a piece off of me and left me to bleed on the street, like the sun had disappeared from the sky, like I was locked in the Cage by myself with no way out, I missed you, I missed you I missed you -_ “…Upset. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Adam flinched, turning his face farther away. His voice was indecipherable when he said, “…Keep going.”

“The Winchesters found me,” Michael continued. “I…I went with them, to help them kill my father. One way or another.”

“They told me you _betrayed_ them to your father,” Adam said.

Michael swallowed, guilt filling his mouth like blood. _Traitor, weakling, coward, fool_ \- “That’s…true too.”

Adam looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to cry or strike him. Michael wouldn’t have fought back. “Why would you possibly have thought that was a good idea?” He said roughly. 

“I didn’t,” Michael started, and just barely managed to restrain himself from saying that he didn’t mean to. Like the Shadow said, he still had. “I…my father, he…”

_“Come on, Michael. You don’t really think you’d be able to live on your own, do you? It’s very brave of you to try, but don’t you think you’d be better off with me? Think of the mess you’d make of everything on your own.”_

_“I…I still want to try.”_

_“Come on, Mikey. You wanna live in a dead world, all by yourself?”_

_“That’s - that was your fault! You did that!”_

_“Aw, come on, Mikey. You know if you had just done as you were told and fulfilled your role, I wouldn’t have had to punish them like that.”_

_“I - no, that’s not…”_

Michael curled in on himself. What could he say? How could he explain? He shouldn’t have listened. He could have done better, he shouldn’t have listened, he was - he was -

“He told you to,” Adam said slowly.

Michael nodded miserably. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Everything that he’d been told felt like a silly, childish excuse for what he’d done. He didn’t have to listen, he didn’t have to listen, he didn’t have to listen but he had and he was -

“And of course, you always do what your Father tells you,” Adam said, still in that terrible, slow voice like he was etching out the words as he spoke. “Because everything Father does is right, isn’t it? Even when it makes you suffer.” His voice was thick and tight with something Michael hadn’t heard from him before, that made a stone sink low in his chest. He’d heard him sound angrier before, in those first few years when they’d not yet made their agreement, but there was something in his voice that he’d not had before.

_Disappointment_.

“No, he was wrong,” Michael said desperately. “He was wrong, I - _you_ deserved better, I should have been smarter, I’m so - _stars_ , Adam, I’m so sorry.” 

Adam flinched like he’d been struck when Michael said his name. 

“I just - I can’t -“ he pressed his hands to his face again, then started to fidget with his gloves, tugging on them like they were ill-fitting. But Michael noticed that he seemed ever so slightly less tense than before, and he wasn’t watching Michael quite as strictly, like a frightened cat that wouldn’t let you touch it but had learned that you wouldn’t eat it. “How are you supposed to have come back if it wasn’t your father?” He said it like he was a fox pouncing on a mouse, like he was looking for cracks in the wall Michael was building.

“I annoyed the Shadow into letting me out of the Empty,” Michael said.

Adam paused. “You did what?”

Michael didn’t flush, because he was fairly certain this form had no blood, but he certainly had the urge to. Quickly he recounted the tale - the struggle to remain awake and remember in the Empty, the vision the Shadow had imparted to him, the year of deliberately being as loud and obnoxious as he could, and being dropped in front of a drugstore at night before reacclimatizing and returning to Adam as soon as he could. He left out the carving off of his Grace - he didn’t want to seem like he was asking for pity, or trying to obligate Adam - _look what I did for you, now you have to forgive me!_ No.

Adam seemed to - relax wasn’t quite the right word. Straighten up, like the story Michael was telling was distracting him enough that he wasn’t thinking about anything else. It struck Michael how like the Cage this was, except in reverse - this time, it was him sitting on the floor telling a story, while Adam watched him in silence, keeping his thoughts to himself.

When he was done, Adam’s expression was unreadable, but he seemed less afraid. His gaze was shadowed, his eyes boring into Michael like he was trying to see underneath this false skin. It would be easier if they still shared the same mind - but now was not the time to point that out. 

“You spent a year annoying a cosmic entity because you wanted to come back to me and apologize,” Adam said eventually. Michael could glean nothing from his tone at all.

Michael raised his head. “And I would do it again, if I had to.”

Adam sucked in a short, sharp breath. “I -“ he cut himself off quickly, hands fluttering by his side like he wasn’t sure what to do with them. “No, no, I can’t,” he muttered, and pressed them into his face again, digging his nails in. “You’re lying, you have to be lying.”

“I’m not!” 

Adam started when Michael shouted and Michael dropped his volume immediately. “Really. I just wanted to apologize. I…I know I don’t have the right to ask anything of you, so I won’t try and ask you to forgive me or anything. I just -“ his voice caught in his throat. “I just wanted to see you again,” he whispered.

Adam made a low sound in the back of his throat, a muffled cry like someone had stabbed him. “No, no…how can I believe you?” His voice was desperate, not accusing. “You lie to get a yes, you’ve done it before - how can I believe you?"

“I’ll do anything you want me to do to prove it,” Michael said instantly, ignoring the painful thorns of guilt at Adam’s words. So much pain he’d caused for nothing. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”

“What will you do if I tell you no?” Adam demanded. “Are you going to leave again?”

Michael paused. “I…wasn’t going to ask for a yes,” he said honestly. “I wouldn’t want to presume.” 

Adam made another soft, pained sound. “But would you leave?”

Michael opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t find his words. The look on Adam’s face was strange, broken-open and wanting. A suspicion he struggled to put words to took form. “Do you…not want me to leave?”

That seemed, however, to be too far. Like a gate slamming shut, Adam’s expression went blank and cold. “I don’t care what you do,” he snapped, but seemed to regret it as soon as the words left him. He opened and closed his mouth for a few moments before turning on his heel and running away, back into the recesses of the Bunker. 

The spell faded, but Michael didn’t get up. He knelt on the cold, hard floor, staring at the spot where Adam had been.

———

He didn’t see Adam again until later that evening. 

He’d gotten off the floor eventually and, seeing nothing else to do decided to explore the library, which was how he’d found the source of the strange sunlight. There were windows set into the walls, small ones, but they opened onto bright, sunlit fields, filled with flowers he vaguely recognized from the ones sprouting from the walls. 

Which was of course implausible normally, as the bunker was underground.

Michael was trying to get the window open, fingers scrabbling at the wood, and was contemplating blasting it open when Adam’s voice came from behind him. 

“I sealed it for a reason,” he said quietly.

Michael stopped and turned to face him. His eyes were red, Michael realized, and his voice was scratchy. Michael knew enough about human anatomy to know what that meant.

“Are you…” he started. Adam’s glare froze the words in his throat. He swallowed, and started again. “Did you…did you put a portal to Avalon in your library just to get more sunlight?”

Adam shrugged, a hint of his old mischievousness entering his face. “Cheaper than a sun lamp.”   
  
Michael couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “Is it? I imagine the ingredients for such a spell would be expensive.”

Adam shook his head. “The Men of Letters have so many supplies. I barely needed to get anything, the part that took the most effort was sealing the windows. I just want a view, I don’t want an actual portal.”

“No, I suppose not,” Michael mused, trying the window again. “You’d hardly want goblins invading your bedroom at night.” 

Adam snorted - then his face fell, and his smile disappeared beneath a glower. Michael blinked, then looked down, his spirit sinking low in his chest. He’d forgotten, just for a moment. 

“So,” he said carefully. “You - is it okay if I stay? To prove it to you?” 

Adam scowled, ducking his head. “I don’t care what you do,” he said again, but it sounded more resigned. “Do whatever you want.”

“Alright,” Michael said quietly. “Alright.”

Adam was silent for a few more moments, before he swore under his breath and stalked away. Michael watched, and did not follow.

———

It was…strange, after that.

They didn’t talk about it, was the thing. They barely talked at all, after that. They just kind of…avoided each other, and Michael pretended to not see how Adam watched him out of the corner of his eye when they were in the same room. It was sort of a mixture between how a man watches a live tiger, and as if he had to keep checking to make sure Michael was still there. He seemed to expect any day for Michael to turn on him or get bored and leave, and it made the hole in Michael’s chest slowly widen. He’d had so much faith in him, once.

He wanted to talk to Adam, but it was like he didn’t know how, anymore. Many times he caught himself turning to tell Adam something, or show him something interesting he’d read or found, only to find Adam just…watching him, face blank. Something about that expression always stole the words in his throat, and he would duck his head and put whatever it was he’d found back. The only part that made that bearable was when he caught Adam do the same thing, even if he would scowl and leave after he did.

Adam hadn’t forbidden him from any part of the bunker, but Michael tried not to be too long in the areas he frequented. He didn’t want to bother him. He spent most of his time looking at things like the _interdimensional geoscope_ , a thing which had given him a real shock to find - what was it with humans and always doing more than he expected? - or wandering the hallways at night, unable to sleep.

Sometimes he heard Adam crying through the door to his room. He wanted to go in, he wanted so _badly_ to go in and hold him, but instead he breathed peace through the door, and waited by it until Adam’s quiet, muffled sobs subsided. At least he could do that for him. Adam never mentioned it in the morning, and so he didn’t either.

It was like a parody of their time in the Cage and their brief months of freedom afterwards. They were together again, they had each other again…but it was not the same. Could it be the same again?

Michael suspected he knew what the answer was.

———

One interesting thing that became clear was that Adam was obviously self-taught when it came to his witchcraft. He didn’t seem to do much of anything except practice it, sometimes reviewing the same spell over and over again for hours. When he wasn’t practicing, he was reading in the library. He didn’t eat very much, or sleep. (Michael bit back offers to help him sleep. Before, before - but now, maybe not.)

When he was practicing was the only time Michael saw him remove his gloves. 

Michael tried to be out of sight when he was practicing. He needed to focus for this kind of thing, and distraction seemed to be a mild term for what Michael’s presence did for him.

It had seemed at the start that Adam’s practice was mainly a hobby, but this idea was proven to be incorrect one night when Michael went to the kitchen, only to find Adam talking on the phone while he cut vegetables with a deft hand. “- that’s all you need?” Adam asked.

A voice came from the phone that was laid on the counter by him, loud and clear - what was that called, speakerphone or something? Michael paused, listening. 

“Yep,” came a voice from the speaker. It was deep and smooth, with a noticeable Canadian accent. “Thank you again, Adam, that’s a lot of help.”

Adam’s face was still shadowed, dark circles standing out prominently under his eyes, but the smile on his face was genuine, if small. Michael could have cried to see it. “Of course,” Adam said. “I’m always happy to help. You’ll let me know if she needs anymore?”

“Of course,” the voice said. “Really, thank you. If you hadn’t made her any, we would never have had time.”

“Did you get the recipe? It would be safer if one of you all could make some.”

The voice from the speaker sounded a little sheepish. “You know most of the witches we’ve got do different magic. We’re training a few of the new kids up, though. Will be soon you don’t have to bother with this.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Adam said hastily. “I just wouldn’t want her to unexpectedly run out.”

“That won’t be a problem. We have enough for ages - it’s just, you know, some of the ingredients are out of season here…faster to ask you.”

“Hmm. Point.”

Michael stepped back. As quietly as he could, he walked away, head awhirl. 

After _everything_ , Adam was still helping people however he could. He still hadn’t given up. 

Adam didn’t seem to go down to the weapons rooms that often, so it was there that Michael flew. It wasn’t very welcoming, down there in the cold, but it was dark, and quiet, which meant when Michael had to cover his mouth and have a quiet little meltdown over how much he loved Adam, there was no one there to see. 

———

It was mainly weird, more than anything else. 

For one thing, there was the way Adam looked for him. 

Michael didn’t realize it until one day he was cataloguing the weapons the Men of Letters had on hand - an impressive arsenal, and it was him saying that - and he heard footsteps hurrying down to his level. He ducked his head around a shelf, only to see Adam, looking around with eyes wide with panic. 

“Adam?” He said quietly.

Adam jumped and spun. He stared at Michael blinking for half a second, before all the tension went out of his body at once. “I thought -“ 

He remembered himself then, and pulled his scarf up over his face. “Nevermind,” he muttered, and turned to walk away. Michael watched him go, brows furrowed.

———

Michael found him asleep in the library once, head on his arms, a book on astronomy open just in front of him, and spent a good minute worrying about waking him up. He didn’t want to be intrusive - but he also was fairly sure being asleep in this sort of position was bad for a human’s back. 

(Here had been a new discovery, during the Cage - for all that angels thought that humans had some, uh, issues, there was nothing an angel had ever said that a human hadn’t said twice over about themselves. It just felt different, was all, to know they were aware of themselves in such a way. Somehow it had never occurred to him that they could be, but hearing some of the things Adam told him once he felt more comfortable with him was a real education. It was a little like, in all honesty, being a video game developer receiving bug reports.) 

Adam didn’t stir immediately when Michael gently touched his shoulder. He shifted, murmuring in his sleep. Michael was going to prod him again when he noticed something odd - Adam’s gloves were off. The way he was sleeping with his head on his arms, one arm was turned so his palm was facing up. 

There was a weird scar on it. It looked like a burn, but not a burn such as Michael was familiar with. It looked like several rings, within each other getting smaller as they went. Michael swallowed, suddenly nervous for reasons he couldn’t put to words. What would cause a scar such as that?

He pushed Adam again, as gently as he could. “Hey,” he whispered. “Wake up, you’re going to hurt yourself sleeping here.”

Adam shifted again - _towards_ Michael, nuzzling his head into Michael’s arm. Michael froze at the sudden touch. “Mmm,” Adam sighed, sounding comfortable and happy.

Michael tried to think of what to do, but all his thoughts suddenly seemed to be coming through a thick layer of white cotton. “Adam,” he said again. “Please wake up,” and he wasn’t quite able to keep a plea out of his voice. He knew what he would do, if everything wasn’t so strange. He could pick Adam up, carry him to somewhere warm for him to rest, but everything _was_ so strange and this - it felt like being taunted with something he couldn’t have, it - “Please wake up.”

Adam shifted more - and then woke up all of a sudden. There was a moment of sleep-filled blurriness where he looked up at Michael and smiled, and then all of a sudden Michael saw awareness slam back into him like a train.

He pushed himself away from Michael so hard his chair clattered to the floor behind him. He stared at Michael for a moment, eyes wide, before his face went red and he turned and fled the library without picking his chair back up. 

Michael picked it up for him and pushed it back into place. What else could he even do?  
  
———

“How long are you planning to do this?” Adam asked one day, voice accusatory. 

Michael looked up from what he was doing (scratching out the Winchesters’ initials on the library table. After some deliberation, he’d decided to leave the little _MW_ , as well, the way her offspring were wasn’t her fault, but the _DW_ was already gone and the _SW_ half-way rubbed out.) “As long as you need me to,” he said simply.

Adam blinked, looking surprised. “Why?” He said, a hint of desperation beneath his voice. “This can’t be fun for you. When are you going to leave?”

Michael stared at him. “Do you want me to leave?” He asked quietly.

Adam flinched. “I - don’t care what you do,” he said, and it sounded even less convincing than the last time he’d said it. “Are you going to leave?”

Michael tilted his head. “Adam,” he said, not unkindly. “You waited for me for three hundred years in the Cage. I can wait as long as you need.”

Adam sucked in a short, sharp breath. “No, I -“ his hands went up to hide his face again. Without saying anything more, he turned and strode away.

———

They still didn’t talk about it, but it changed as time went on.

Adam didn’t seem as scared, as sure that Michael would hurt him, but he also didn’t seem to know what to do. The way he watched him was different - less fear and more confusion, like Michael was a puzzle he couldn’t understand. He stopped running out of the room so easily, but the way he watched Michael from the corners of the room instead was…odd. 

They didn’t talk about other things as much, but Adam didn’t flinch as much if Michael addressed him. He didn’t react that much either, rarely responded, but he was listening. That was more than Michael expected, so.

It was still tense and strange and weird, but it was…a different weird. If nothing else, Michael couldn’t quite imagine Adam sending him away anymore. 

It was all just very strange, but Michael decided to count his blessings. If nothing else, if nothing else, Adam didn’t seem to be afraid of him anymore. And that was worth every feather on every one of Michael’s wings. 

———

Michael hadn’t been bothering to keep track of time (not that he was particularly good at knowing the passage of days as it was, especially not while living underground in a bunker that was almost always mid-day sunny), but eventually he realized that it was winter.

Winter. He stood in the bunker’s doorway and watched the snow fall gently, blanketing the ground in white. It had been an idea he wasn’t sure about, before. He remembered discussing the cycle of seasons and asking if there wasn’t some other thing they could do to let the world begin anew, something other than the freezing polar wastes. He wasn’t really sure if that was a time his father had been wrong in ignoring him, even with everything. If he concentrated, he could feel the shoots of new plants beneath the snow, the warm life that would sleep until spring.

The cycle of rebirth. No wonder humans came up with reincarnation, he thought. It was the logic of a story, looking at the way the sun rose every day, the way the spring returned from winter, and thinking such rules had to apply to yourself, but it wasn’t a bad story. It made a sideways kind of sense, if you thought about it. A lot of human things were like that, he’d found. Most of them were kind of stupid, but a lot seemed to make everything more special if you tried to think using them. _Light always returns_ , he thought distantly. 

On a peculiar half-formed whim, he called some snow up to his hand. It was a lot like the snow that lived in Adam’s memories, but less crisply, storybook white. He tried to shape it into a snowball and found it didn’t seem to want to hold a shape so well. So it was only one kind of snow you could sculpt with? Fair enough.

Winter, Michael recalled, had been Adam’s favorite season. What with how little he left the bunker and the sunlight that filled the halls underground, Michael rather suspected that had changed. It’s not like it had been cold or snow that Adam had been particularly appreciative of, anyway. He’d liked that Kate Milligan was off of work then, the way the lights shone on the snow after they were hung up for -

\- Christmas. Michael blinked.

What day was it today? December 15th, or something? 

Should he get Adam a present?

Normally he would have gone eagerly to find something, but now, with the strange mood that hung between them, Michael wasn’t sure. It was only that…well, Adam could be distrustful of such things. It was John Winchester’s work, of that Michael was sure. He remembered being told how the man would bring Adam to a baseball game every year, not because he cared for Adam - if he’d cared, he would have known Adam didn’t like baseball. Adam could be a little wary of presents - he knew they didn’t have to mean someone cared for him.

It wouldn’t seem like that, right? Maybe if Michael got something and just left it for him to find?

Having thusly found a sufficient excuse for what he already wanted to do (spoil Adam) Michael stepped out of the doorway, carefully shut the door to the bunker behind him, and flew away.

He had a rough idea of what he wanted to do, thankfully. Adam spent most of his time reading, and rarely put much time into attending to food for himself (another thing that hurt Michael’s, uh, metaphorical heart to witness - Adam had been so happy about food, before). It meant, in practical terms, that there was an entire box of instant ramen in the bunker’s kitchen and Adam kept running out of the onion powder he was using to make it taste palatable.

Michael knew his knowledge of human food was…limited, at best, but surely he could find some better fare and bring it back? It couldn’t be too hard.

In fact it took the better part of an hour, and involved a lot of flying around, especially once Michael got distracted looking at the weird things humans had done to food. Adam and Eve had never been so…creative. Unseen by everyone in a Norwegian restaurant, Michael poked dubiously at a sort of fish…thing. It was caustic, of all things. Surely a caustic fish couldn’t be good to eat?

A cook took it, passing right through him on accident, and placed it a container of water. Michael blinked, tilting his head. Was that to deal with the lye? It was…interesting, if nothing else.

He debated the merits of trying to make Adam try it, decided they were few, and left quietly, shaking his head. Humans and food. Well, why not experiment? It would, if nothing else, be more interesting.

On the basis that if he wanted Adam not to try and kill him for real it should probably be a little more ordinary for him than that, however, he eventually found a little vegetarian Chinese restaurant that looked interesting. Interesting too was the process of acquiring the food, once he remembered that one needs to pay for things one wants and compensate them for their labor. He ended up taking money from someone’s bank account, but, hey. The bank account had some very high numbers indeed, and he’d never gotten paid for helping to hold the entire world together before, and it was to buy something for Adam. It was fine. It was fine.

He enjoyed least the process of actually ordering, suddenly extremely grateful to Adam he’d been able to watch him do this first. He was fairly sure it wouldn’t have occurred to him to say things like, “Can I order to-go?” if he hadn’t. He spent the entire time he was waiting convinced he was doing terribly, but as no one gave him any strange looks and he did acquire the food he wanted relatively quickly, he concluded it was probably all in his head. 

It was when he was taking the food that he heard the first prayer. 

_Michael? Michael, Michael where are you, Michael please -_

Adam? Michael nearly dropped the bag he’d been handed. Adam, Adam what’s wrong -

“Sir?” The lady who’d handed him his food looked at him oddly, elderly face wrinkling in concern. “Are you al -“

Michael, who had already flown away, did not hear the rest of the sentence.

He went straight to the bunker this time, hands itching for a sword, but when he got there he found no sign of trouble. Terror and fury dulled to caution as he looked around, finding nothing disturbed, nothing at all out of place. He cast his senses out across the bunker, only finding Adam, no intruders, nothing that seemed to be a problem.

What was wrong?

This time he didn’t wait for Adam to find him. 

Adam was standing in the middle of the infirmary. His face was filled with a helpless, distracted kind of panic, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, staring at the room without seeing any of it. He whirled around as soon as Michael appeared behind him. His face filled with joy and relief and his shoulders slumped, like all the tension in him had vanished at once, before he seemed to remember himself and his face went shadowed and blank again. 

“You -“ he started, and stopped. Swallowing, he licked his lips and tried again. “I thought you’d -“ 

“I was getting you a Christmas present,” Michael said. “Food that’s not packaged.”

The noise Adam made was indescribable - a sort of laugh and sob all at once. “You’re bothering me about what I eat again?” 

Michael shrugged. “Well, I want to look out for you - no, wait, Adam -“

For Adam had made a gasp like someone had stabbed him and almost, almost burst into tears - if it could be called that. There were tears running down his face like a dam had burst, but he wasn’t sobbing. His breath was coming in soft hiccups, like there was something stuck in his throat, and he had covered his mouth with his hands like like that would hide his tiny, pained cries. Michael reached for him, but he shook his head and backed up towards the door. Michael drew his hand back. It felt a lot like trying to convince a feral cat to come close to you - you couldn’t move too fast. He backed up, moving to sit down on one of the beds and trying to look nonthreatening.

“Come here?” he prompted.

Adam stared at him, frozen in place. Michael looked down, trying to seem as still and calm as he could. _I won’t hurt you. It’s okay._

Slowly, like he was going to run away again if Michael moved, Adam sat down on the bed opposite Michael’s. He didn’t say anything, just pulled his scarf over his face and curled into himself, his shoulders shaking as he continued to try and force back cries.

Neither of them said anything for a long moment. Michael’s mind was awhirl. What did he need to say? What would help here? What was needed?

“You know,” he said eventually. “If you didn’t want me to buy food for you, that’s fine.”

The resulting laugh from Adam was rather hysterical and ended on a sob, but it seemed at least halfway genuine. “What did you even buy?”

“I found a Chinese restaurant. I don’t know a lot about food, but it all looked alright. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, though.” 

Adam laughed again. Michael’s hands itched to hold him - that wasn’t what he was supposed to sound like when he laughed. Like the laughing was the last bastion against even more tears. 

“I can’t believe you,” he said, half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re ridiculous, you know that? Wasting your time getting food just because I keep forgetting to eat.”

“It’s not a waste of time,” Michael told him. “You’re supposed to eat three meals a day, right? Or something like that?” 

Adam snorted. “Something like that,” he said, and then his voice cracked and he pulled his scarf up farther over his face. 

Michael picked at a thread on the bed’s sheets. This was the most they’d talked in…well, in five years. This was the most Adam had been in the same room as him for the past few months. What did he need to say? What did Adam need from him? _What’s to stop you from messing it up again?_

“You could always teach me how to cook, if you wanted,” he offered. “I could help make sure you get enough to eat -“

“- No!” Adam shrunk back as soon as he yelled out. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, pulling his scarf back over his face. “Just - no. I can’t. I can’t.” 

Michael bit his lip. This was much easier when they had the same body, could see each other’s thoughts like they were their own. What was he supposed to do now?

“Why not?” Michael asked. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind learning how to take care of you - what’s wrong?” For as soon as he’d said that Adam flinched again. 

“I can’t -“ Adam swallowed, and tried again. “What am I supposed to do when you leave?” 

His voice was very small.

“I won’t leave, not if you don’t want me too,” Michael said, a wild hope rising in his chest like spring. “Do you want me to stay?”

This time, Adam nodded. A small nod, but clearly there. 

“Then I will,” Michael started, but Adam had started to talk again. 

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Adam said, his voice muffled by his scarf. “It _never_ matters what I want. _Everyone_ leaves me. I can’t - I can’t get used to -“ Then his voice failed him, and he hid his face more in his arms.

“Adam…” Michael’s voice trailed off. What could he say? He knew that was true. He’d promised not to be one of them - and look how well he’d done at that.

“There’s nothing I can ever do,” Adam continued, his voice small and dull and miserable. “I couldn’t do anything when Mom died, and I couldn’t do anything about being stuck in the Cage, and then _you_ \- you were -“ His voice broke into a choked sob. “And I was so angry but I thought you didn’t care, so then I was angry at myself, and I didn’t know what to _do_ I just - I just _left_ you and -“

“Hey, hey,” Michael interrupted. “I don’t blame you. You thought I’d just ignored everything you’d ever told me, I don’t blame you for not trying to find a way to bring me back.”

“I should have had more faith in you,” Adam said. He leaned towards Michael without seeming to realize it. 

“Why? The Winchesters told you otherwise. You’re not exactly the blind faith type.” 

Adam made a soft, pained noise. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly. 

Michael reached over and - softly, gently, carefully - laid his hand on his knee. Adam jerked at the contact. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, but if it helps - I forgive you,” he said quietly. “Really.”

Adam shuddered. “I’m sorry I thought you were just here to possess me.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no,” Michael said wryly, and then squeezed Adam’s knee. “But if you never want that again, that’s fine too.”

“I just - _I can’t_.” Adam’s tears had subsided, but he sounded like he was close to them again. “When you were gone, it was like - it was like the sun went out of the sky, I just - I _can’t_. I can’t keep doing this.” He sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

Michael sighed. “Do you want to go back up?” he asked. “Let’s go back up. It’s cold down here.”

“Is it?” Adam said, and there was an odd, sour expression on his face. “I didn’t notice.”

———

Michael had meant to bring him to the library, but Adam tugged on his arm instead, pulling him into the hallway. “Where are we going?”

“My room,” Adam said without looking around. 

Michael bit his lip, and let himself be dragged behind him. It wasn’t like being in someone’s room was a new level of intimacy for them, but - well. It had been a while since they’d even talked, was all. “Why do you want to talk in there?”

“It’s more comfortable.”

What that turned out to mean was hotter. Michael saw that Adam’s bed was absolutely piled with layers upon layers of blankets, and there were three space heaters running at once. Even Michael winced at the heat for a moment. “Isn’t this too hot for a human?”

Adam shrugged, picking at his gloves. “Probably.” He said nothing more. 

Michael sat down on the bed. After a few moments, Adam joined him. He sat close to Michael, almost close enough for Michael to pull him into his side. He reached for him, before lowering his hand to the bed. Maybe not yet.

“Why are you wearing gloves?” he asked instead. 

Adam didn’t respond immediately. He sat frozen for a moment, his face blank, before he sighed and pulled off a glove. Michael saw how he winced as he did so, like he was outside in the frigid winter air. He held his hand out to Michael.

When Michael looked, he saw that same odd scar he’d seen before - those strange concentric rings.

“What happened?”

“I touched the stove.” Adam said it like he was trying to hold it out from himself with one hand. 

Michael brushed his thumb over Adam’s palm. Adam shivered, and then drew his hand back. 

“Now why would you do that?” Michael asked softly.

“Because it didn’t feel warm, that’s why.” Adam pulled his glove back on. “It never feels warm anymore. Nothing ever does now.” His voice was…strained, like he was trying to force a veneer of casualness over his tone. 

“Why…” Michael blinked, memories of Adam telling him about humans resurfacing. “Is it -“

“Because I got used to you, that’s why.” Adam swallowed and looked down. “You’re very…well, you know.”

As Lucifer was cold, like winter wastes and frozen planets light-years from any sun, Michael was of heat and life and light like the hearts of nebulae. He’d never had cause to regret that, before.

“I’m -“

“No, it’s not your fault,” Adam interrupted. “But, you see…you were gone and I - you even took _warmth_ from me when you left!” His voice ended on a sort of weak, choked-off sob. “I can’t do this again.”

“I…” Michael swallowed. How could he have messed up so badly? How could he have forgotten what, who really mattered, even for a moment? “I won’t leave again,” he said quietly. “If you let me stay, I’ll never leave you again, whether or not you let me possess you. And -“ he hesitated. “Do you want me to warm you up? I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

“You sound like a romance novel love interest,” Adam muttered, sounding for a moment like his normal self. “But no. I can’t - I have to get used to being by myself.” He did not sound remotely excited about this prospect, or anything but sort of dully resigned. 

“I told you, I won’t leave you unless you want me too…”

“You don’t know that.” Adam reached for his scarf, but instead of hiding his face in it again, just twisted the fabric back and forth between his fingers. “What if Jack Kline decides he can’t risk another archangel being around? What if the Shadow takes you back?” His voice was high, like it was taking effort not to cry again. 

“Oh I promise you, they’re not going to want me back soon,” Michael said. “And I’m not really an archangel anymo -“ He clamped his mouth shut, but it was too late. 

“What did you do?” Adam’s eyes were very piercing. 

“Well, it wasn’t so much what I did…” quickly Michael explained.

When he was done, Adam looked a mixture between worried and furious. “Does it hurt?” He scooted forward, reaching for Michael. “Are you feeling alright?”  
“I’m fine,” Michael said, but he didn’t move away. “Really, I would have given it to them anyway if they’d asked. I would have given all of it if they’d asked - I just wanted to see you again.”

Adam flushed bright red. “Don’t say such things,” he mumbled. “I don’t want you to give up yourself for me. I wish you hadn’t had to.” 

“I know,” Michael said softly. “But I don’t mind, really. It was just a shock because they didn’t ask, is all.” Michael squeezed Adam’s hand. “But I’m alright. I promise.”

Adam bit his lip. “If you’re sure…” 

“I am, don’t worry.” He smiled, and squeezed Adam’s hand again. “I don’t think you could do anything about a spell the Shadow cast.”

Adam’s face crumpled, and he leaned forward like he’d been struck. “Of course not,” he muttered. 

Michael hesitated, then scooted closer, till he and Adam were almost touching. “I don’t know how to reassure you,” he said quietly. “I really won’t let us be separated again if you let me stay. And I promise - there’s nothing mandating you be alone forever. It’s not a curse - it’s not your fault.” 

“Well, I suppose you would know.” Adam’s voice was a bit strained, but amused. “Seeing as you were in charge of things like that.”

Michael squirmed. “Well, sort of, anyway.” 

“How can I?” Adam’s voice was searching, desperate. His eyes were so wide, and so blue. The rest of him had changed over the years, but his eyes were still the same, still soft and blue like the ocean caught in them, or like Michael’s favorite star. Michael found for a moment he’d forgotten how to speak. “How can I believe you?” And this time it sounded less rhetorical, and more like a request. _Please, please, tell me how I can._

“I…I’m not sure,” Michael admitted. “But…in the Cage, didn’t you tell me things were still worth it, even if they didn’t last forever?”

He reached up, and - moving slowly all the time so Adam could move back if he wanted to - pressed his free hand against Adam’s cheek. Adam sighed, and his eyes nearly fluttered shut. 

“You’re strong,” Michael said softly. “You’re so strong. In the Cage you were the one who made the choice not to succumb to madness and darkness; without you I never would have made it, not when everything around me seemed so hopeless. If something happened again, I know you could weather it. I don’t know if that’s a reason to deny yourself something you want, though - if you do want me back,” he added hastily. 

“Oh, I do,” and Adam’s tone made Michael shiver with a sort of dark delight. Without really noticing it they seemed to have gotten closer to each other; their knees were touching, and their faces were very close. “It was all I could think about for years. Every time I went anywhere, did anything, talked to anyone, I thought about how much I would have preferred to do it with you.” His voice shifted, turning sheepish. “And then I hated myself, for still being so gone on someone who’d never cared about me. It's frightening, to want someone so much.

“I’m sorry,” Michael apologized again. He swiped his thumb over the scar on Adam’s cheekbone, making him shiver. His skin was a slightly different texture. “I shouldn’t have been so stupid, I should never have listened to him.”

“You were all alone,” Adam said, voice tender. “It’s hard to make good decisions all alone.” He hesitated for a moment, as if warring with himself, before he leaned further into Michael’s hand. “But what did he say?”

Michael stiffened. 

_Useless. Failure. Is that what you want? To live knowing if you had just done your duty, everything would still be fine? How could you have ever lived on your own? You’re not designed for that. You break everything you’ve ever touched. You’re not meant to make choices…_

“Michael?” Adam’s voice, sweet and concerned, broke him out of his trance. 

Michael shook his head. “I - I can’t talk about it now. I’ll tell you some other time, just - not now.” 

After a few moments, Adam nodded. “Alright.”

He moved, taking Michael’s hand so they were sitting next to each other on the bed, holding hands. The fabric was very soft, but Michael found himself yearning to touch his hands properly. Did the unmarred skin on his hands have a different feeling to his scars, too?

“What would you do,” Adam said eventually, “If I said yes?” 

Michael smiled, and told the truth. “I’d wind my Grace around your soul, and never let go. I’d tie us together so no one else could ever break us apart - I missed you so much, you know that? In the Empty I thought only of you. If…if you don’t want to, I’ll go, but I missed having you with me.” He squeezed Adam’s hands. “It’s sort of boring, all alone in my head.”

“You’re not boring,” Adam said immediately. He squeezed back.

“I want to say yes,” Adam confessed. “I just…nothing good ever lasts for me. I don’t want to lose you again.” He blinked rapidly, and then rubbed at one of his eyes. 

“You won’t,” Michael said immediately. “I promise - I’ll do everything I can to never leave you alone again.”

Adam took a deep breath. “Then…yes.”

Michael blinked. “Really? Are you -“

He shut his mouth at the look Adam gave him. “Right!”

He didn’t waste anymore time. 

Were there words for it? For the relief of coming back together? For coming home after so long? For several minutes, hours, days, they couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, lost in the euphoria of reunion after so long, their selves orbiting each other like the components of a binary star. 

Michael wound layers of his Grace around Adam, and Adam leaned into it eagerly, his soul flaring in joy and relief physical and mental, as for the first time in five years he felt really warm again. He was scared, he was so scared, like lightning buzzing through his soul, but he could barely spare the focus for it. Michael Michael Michael, his soul sang, and Michael threaded more Grace around Adam to soothe and protect and hold in response.

_I never thought - I never dreamed of this again_ -

Neither of them really knew who that thought belonged to. They just held on even tighter.

———

“I can’t believe we forgot about the food you bought,” Adam mourned, poking at it. It was quite cold, not to mention rather stale and gross by this time. 

Michael, back in his familiar weightless apparition, shrugged. “It’s fine. I can buy you more.”

“I guess - hold on. Where did you even get the money?” Adam turned to look at him. His hands were bare, and he was instead wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved green shirt - _Michael's color,_ he'd said.

Michael stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled. 

“Michael!”

“What? It was some rich man’s money - you were the one who told me how the rich don’t deserve their wealth.”

“I suppose I did,” conceded Adam, the son of a working-class single mother. “Fair enough. Still, this is a bit of a pity.”

Michael leaned forward, brushing his shoulder against Adam’s. “Maybe I can be your Christmas present instead.”

“Now you really sound like a romance novel love interest.” Adam’s face was red.

“Aren’t I your love interest?” Michael teased.

Adam’s flush deepened. “When did you learn to flirt,” he grumbled, tilting his head up and to the side.

“All from you, my Adam,” Michael said, leaning in. “All from you.”

_Fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's so much unnecessary detail and stuff in this. god. 
> 
> if this made you feel something you're legally required to tell me. reward system me for my pains
> 
> the thing with Adam and the Canadian Men of Letters got cut for length, but it's a cute story! You can probably guess from context clues, but if you want more info, I'm happy to share
> 
> goodnight everyone I am going to BED, I probably wrote another 10000 words of shit that I cut or changed, I'm exhausted

**Author's Note:**

> Me, in your house: comment and/or kudos  
> You: why  
> Me: you gotta


End file.
